


Fill the Void

by squeezedoutofmiracles



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dom/sub, M/M, Non-Consensual Spanking, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:53:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squeezedoutofmiracles/pseuds/squeezedoutofmiracles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"An au of any kind where Equius is GHB's protege and GHB considers it necessary to punish him sometimes. Equius loves it."</p><p>Equius Zahhak was taken into indefinite servitude for the highbloods aboard the SS ZILLYWHY, and it turns out that what he actually knows about highbloods is next to nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Badfaith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badfaith/gifts).



> Thank you Badfaith for the prompt! I hope I managed to satisfy. This was a lot of fun~
> 
> (ghbleer is a past relationship, and meowrails is only mentioned in passing)

There's a long and illustrious history of bluebloods being taken for servitude fresh off their birth-planet. Most of the bluebloods don't know about this before it happens, hence the necessity of an induction course when they arrive. Equius had previously thought he'd known a great deal about highbloods, more so than they knew about themselves in one particular very notable occasion, but it turned out, as his instructerroriser told him, he "didn't know shit".

There was a whole new set of etiquette for the adults off planet who had had chance to develop on their own, uninterrupted by whatever was going on outside of their ship. There was an entire history carved into the inside of these walls. But most notably there was religion. 

Oh lord was there religion.

If he'd thought Gamzee was bad then this was a whole different level of messy. The seasons of fasting (which really only lasted two nights, maximum) were the worst, where they all clawed at the walls and picked fights over the littlest things. He saw one new recruit from the same processing ring he'd been plucked from get strung up from the rafters for stealing food from the kitchens. They'd left him there for more than a night, wriggling and groaning as the chains cut into his skin.

There were services to learn and titles to memorise, and Equius had to stand in the back of mass three times a night and watch them praise their Messiahs. The first time was like a punch to the gut.

The believers were rowdy and jostling each other from the moment he could set eyes on them (from his place hidden in a back room draped almost entirely in scarves of all mirthful colours, no way could he let them see him spying on mass), collected in pews like trolls clamouring to see an execution rather than a religious service. He had always pictured 'mass' as trolls standing solemnly in rows with their heads bowed, listening to a stern-faced preacher talking about. I don't know. Magnets, or something.

He hadn't expected them to be clamouring, surging in their seats when the curtains shifted, almost on the edge of screaming with paint smeared motherfucking everywhere.

"BROTHER OF MY BROTHER, AN SISTER OF MY SISTER..." A voice came from everywhere at once, and the room quietened, atmosphere unbreathable with tension.

"Are you ready to get fucked up?"

The screams were like someone had actually set off a bomb in the middle of the church. Equius hadn't expected anything like it, not something that would have him gripping onto his ears and losing track of bodies in the crowd as it jumped, seethed like a hornets nest, hands grabbing at the air and voices raising in a white hot collection of noise. Sugar.

A body moved from the curtains, and the noise only intensified, when a troll with horns spiralling with age and hair wider than any doorway moved onto what could only be described as a stage, looking out like he very much approved of the clamour.

"THEY MOTHERFUCKING HEAR YOU, BLOOD OF MY BLOOD!" He roared, voice everywhere at once, looking hysterical with anger and excitement and still so in control, like he could breathe in the atmosphere and hold it in his chest cavity. But he didn't mute it, he let it keep up the pious roar, gloved hands waving it up for them to keep their noise going, thrumming, like a war cry, like they were screaming for their lives. The priest looked like this noise was the only stuff keeping him alive. He ran on the fevered screams of the followers, the believers, and if he had that then he had nothing. But he would always have them.

His head turned, and Equius would swore til the day he died that they made eye contact through the curtains, and he felt something inside him deeply regret a great many decisions that had led him to be peeping in on mass that night.

Not that any of it had been choice. It had been decidedly not his choice when two full grown highbloods had strutted into the sorting station and plucked him out of the mass of blueblood ascendants, whisked him away as a chosen prodigy to provide service for the ship they hailed from. There had been training innumerate, long long hours of it, until he'd been allowed to leave the training blocks to find himself the only blueblood on a ship full of full grown highbloods.

Why he was the only one had never been addressed. He'd just assumed they were really really bad at counting.

-

"ZAHHAK!" A voice called out, one evening many weeks later when he was standing watch over the mess hall. He turned, fingers twitching along the feathered shaft of an arrow in a quiver hanging from the hip of his armoured uniform, stiff but dutiful in keeping him from the knocks and bumps that came with living in the care of a few hundred trolls that could each inflict as much damage as a stardust-fuelled tramplebeast in a wiggling cavern. The Assigner strutted towards him with a face like three days rain, and he straightened up on instinct.

"Room 420 needs you. He's been interrogating some heretics; enemies of the church or some shit, needs someone to go in there and clean his armour off, s'well as his clubs and... Well, everything." She told him, reading off the palm husk that she used to assign jobs. It looked like the list was scrolling for a long time before she reached his pulsing assignment at the bottom.

"When do I get one of those?" Equius asked in a flat mutter, feeling brave enough with the rapport they'd built up over weeks to ask up so boldly. It was how the highbloods got things. They just asked for them.

She just barked a laugh, punching him on the shoulder with a smirk and shaking her head. "Good one, Zahhak. Trot on."

He just nodded, turning to go and wind his way out of the hall, finding room 420. It was a maze inside the ship, with the doors arranged by no logic that made any sort of sense to him, and he was pretty sure whoever had made up the floor plan for this place had been stoned off their nubs. Or just hopped up on whimsy. There were regular scraps over who got to hang one of the 'room 69' plaques on their respite block; 'one of' since multiple fakes had been forged and it was a matter of opinion on which one was the original. Some said it had been destroyed sweeps back.

Come to think of it, Equius was surprised there was only one room with the number 420. It held more significance with the Church. He should really have seen dozens of reproductions by now, but maybe that would be some kind of sin. They were very protective over their religion, that was one thing he'd definitely learned over his time aboard the SS ZILLYWHY. If paint was smudged then you weren't allowed into the mess hall. If you misspoke in mass then they turned on you like animals. He felt almost lucky that he was exempt from almost every rule in their huge books (and he'd seen the books; they weighed more than ten of him collectively).

But room 420 was one that didn't change. He moved through the passages to where he'd spotted the number before and sure enough it was constant. The same doors, with nearly the same grooves and stains on it as last time he'd passed. It wasn't hung with tapestries or even just bare wood, but coated with blood. Not even splatters, but as if someone took buckets of the stuff and poured it over until it formed a gloss. No way in heck was he gracing that mess with his knuckles, so instead he nudged it open with a toe and shuffled inside.

The questioner had probably long since left. They tended to move on and leave their mess behind, for The Help to clean up. Trolls had certainly found it easy to ignore him, like they were long used to his presence, far faster than Equius would have expected. He was the only one on the ship. They'd had ones before him, he was definitely some kind of replacement, but they kept shady on the details of the previous troll. He had been mulling over the fact that a new troll after sweeps of the same old would have led to more bothering from the highbloods, but maybe they'd paid the last protege just as little attention as they now paid him.

The door hushed shut behind him, and he moved into the dark dankness of the room. It didn't look like the rest of the questioning blocks he'd had business cleaning before; they'd all had clean metal floors and grating so the blood drained away. Not only did this block have carpeting, it also had a long thick curtain falling from the ceiling right across where the door opened up to, shutting Equius in a tiny blood-rank section of it. He had to cover up his mouth immediately, almost gagging at the thick heavy rotting smell of it. 

Reaching out, he pressed a hand against the curtain to fumble for an edge to pull at, flinching back when he felt the material soggy and sticky with still-warm and crusting blood. It was the most disgusting smell he'd ever had to endure; worse than any of the kills he'd ever had to pass outside Nepeta's hive which had been abandoned in the sun, it was worse than when his horn had snapped and got an infected duct, it was worse even than when he'd been to the infirmary of the SS ZILLYWHY and found the crazy old trolls strapped up in beds trying to bleed themselves out because it was what their Messiahs wanted. It was like deliberate decay. The best conditions for a rank smell, with cloying moisture in the air and a thick heavy musk that clung to the inside of his lungs.

What had the interrogator been doing before he'd arrived?

When his fingers finally grasped the edge of the curtain, about to haul it back and not care if the saturated cloth came down with it, he heard a shifting on the other side. Oh Lords. Was one of the bodies still alive? He'd never had to finish one off before, they'd always bled out before he arrived to provide cleanup, he'd have to snap its neck to put it out of its misery, or maybe they'd want him to try and save it so it could be questioned again, he wasn't experienced enough to make the call...

"You still a-wake there, guppy?"

He didn't breathe. He held still for seconds that dragged on for hours, his pusher hammering blood round his ears at impossible rates.

"Yeah, yeah..."

The second voice was closer. Low, gruff, sounded worn out and raggedly tired. no further tan a few feet away. Equius could hear a shifting again, something creaking and a splat when soaking fabric hit the ground.

"Whale you're a sta-yacht."

There was a low rumbling chuckle, before the deeper voice spoke up again.

"A state?"

"Don't get fresh with me, bouy, I be speakin' mothaglubbin' truths."

"I'm fine, Meenah, quit your lady-worryin'."

"If you think I'm bouyin' that load'a carp then you take me for a bigga suckafish than your mothaglubbin' supervishore."

"Just need to get cleaned up."

Why was he still in the room? They left, they always left him to get on with it.

"You need to clean up moar than your mothaglubbin' suit, clownfish." Whoever was talking to the motherglubber sounded pissed off, frowny or something, and their voice echoed weirdly. They weren't in the room. Some sort of video call or communications link with the inquisitor still there.

"I said motherfuckin' /quit it/..." There was a slight snarl under his words, and Equius shrank back out of nothing more than instinct on the sounds.

"You think I'm just gonna let my moyray-eel clown around like some trouty lil wriggler?"

"Reckon you did a pretty good motherfuckin' job of doin' exactly that when they cancelled Keepin Up With Kardaa Shiaan."

"That's 'cause you didn't go an' motha-glubbin' re-plaice Kardaa Shiaan with his COD-CLAMMED /DESCENDANT/."

The room went very quiet. There was heavy breathing, and the sound of claws digging into something metallic.

"That /weren't/ my motherfucking /intention/..."

"Your intrenchions went tha FUCK down tha waste chute when ya found out who he was. Should'a had him culled sharkish like a sane mothaglubber. But no, you got /attached/. An' now I'm left dealin' with the ripples."

"I DIDN'T FUCKIN CHOOSE HIM, BLAME MOTHERFUCKIN TEFLAN, SHE PICKED OUT THE MOTHERFUCKER."

"Oh bay-lieve me, I /do/." She hissed, and the other snarled again, louder. "But you know BETTA than her, Kurloz. That's why you're her mothaglubbin supierior. An you shoald'a had him culled as soon as you reelized. Quadrants ain't meant to be replaiced, guppy."

There was a sigh, and the sound of metal creaking, and the voice that came back sounded a mite more broken down than the one that had been roaring back accusations before.

"I don't wanna replace him."

"Then get ridd'a the wiggler."

The next sigh sounded exasperated, like a hiss, and claws dragged over something again.

"Fuckin' fine. He ain't workin' out anyways."

"That's mah bouy. I'll call you up in a timeframe, clownfish, I got some uppity mothaglubbin chump been on hold for you an' I reckon he ain't gonna keep suckin' up if I keep him on the hook much longer."

There was a soft rumble of a chuckle.

"Take care'a yourshellf, Kurloz."

"An' you too. Honkalou, sister."

"Oh glub off, ya old crab."

A fanfare of a sign off trill later, and the room was in silence again. Equius was edging towards the door again, figuring he'd heard far too much into the personal life of whoever he was meant to be cleaning up after, but a throat cleared very loudly and deliberately not three feet from him.

"He must'a been three times your motherfuckin size but your pail donor was a fuckin' sight better at sneakin' around than you."

Oh fucklesticks.

Try to stay silent? Definitely. He held still, breath hitched up in his throat, sweating up a storm in the close hotness of the curtain.

"You were called to motherfucking CLEAN so GET ON WITH IT." The voice snapped, and the curtain was yanked back with a screech of sticky hinges.

The room was stomach-turning.

It wasn't a culling suite; the walls had once been papered and hung with tapestries, the same kind of pious things that draped all over the walls of the main ship, on every surface but a much grander scale. They held blood, blood of almost all colours, lower down the spectrum especially. Around the tassels that grazed the floor there was a thick gummy pool of brown, staining everything up to a tide mark, like the room had filled with it at one point.

It was dark with only one bracket of candles braced against a wall, flickering low light over a particularly dark stain of red, or maybe brown, or maybe green in this light it was impossible to tell.

Buckets of blood. And the stench, it was obvious now, it was coming off the pile of drained bodies from the corner, all on a tarp which had them stacked up against a smeary corner. They were pale and silvery without blood, because their blood had been spilled completely within seconds of their death. It was all over the room, on the walls mostly, but the floor too, on sections where the carpet had been ripped up in raw sections by tooth and claw, chunks scattered about, it stained the metal underneath and crusted in the joints. Cleaning would take years.

It wasn't a culling suite. It was a respite block. The troll who had pulled back the curtain had turned his own respite block into a culling room that stank of death and decay, and sluiced the blood all over the walls. He was insane.

Equius whipped his head to look at the troll who was sitting in the throne that had been dragged in, spilling over all sides of it, watching Equius with a burning intensity that reeked of hatred. He found himself uncomfortable under the gaze but unable to pull back, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides as his eyes dragged over the trolls disgusting form.

"You're the priest. From the masses, all of them, how can you..." He looked about the room and back to him, the hair that nobody else on the ship could hope to imitate, the same face paint that he always wore even if it was scratched up and smeared almost until it was unrecognisable. He looked... Defeated. Like it wasn't worth putting up the fight required to snarl at Equius and get him to turn away. It was fine if he witnessed him like this, he didn't have the energy to care any more.

"Motherfucker, I'm everythin' round these parts." He rumbled, voice deep and ancient as rocks grinding together under a planet's surface. "Interrogator. Priest. Tactician." He smirked mostly to himself, looking over to his armrest. There was a skull resting on the flattened swirl at the end, probably meant as a drinks stand. It had both its horns still.

Both of them tipped in sharpened arrowhead tines.

"Used to be a whole lot more besides. But I'm on a break." He turned to toy with the skull, rubbing his finger pads over the dome of it slowly, thoughtfully.

"A... break?"

"Yes, motherfucker, a motherfucking break, is that quite alright with you?" He asked, snapping as he looked up and fixed Equius with one hell of a stare. The younger troll backed off, nodding quickly and looking about the room. It was beyond a disgrace, it was like it had been purposefully trashed, repeatedly, drenched in blood for days and days.

"This could well take a while." He said, glancing to the troll's feet so as not to make offensive eye contact. Don't stare down a highblood. Certainly don't stare down a highblood who's been sitting going stir crazy in his room for days, chopping up trolls and painting around with them.

"Well then you better get started." Came the reply, snipped and hissy. It seemed best not to keep him waiting, and with a nod Equius surged forwards to try and find somewhere to start. The sleeping platform, definitely, get it so he could sleep and get out of the way and maybe he would be a little more agreeable when he was well rested.

"Oh messiahs, no." The old troll muttered when Equius started gathering armfuls of covers.

"...excuse me, sir?" He replied, putting them back down. "Does something need to be changed?"

"That's not the way it's meant to be done." He said, looking over the pile of crumpled bedding with a sneer. "Not at all."

"I'm sorry, sir. How would you rather it be-"

He was interrupted with a great groan, as the huge troll slid down in his seat and shook his head, covering up his face and the face of the skull sitting on his armrest. "MOTHERFUCKER, YOU'RE CLUELESS!"

He didn't know what to say to that. So he stood, watching the troll slip lower and lower in the seat, until he was hanging off the huge ornate armchair and grabbing the skull in a death grip.

"Your fuckin ancestor wouldn't have messed that shit up. Not even on his first motherfucking day."

The troll was obviously delusional.

"I wouldn't be able to comment. I never knew him." Equius replied glancing about the room for clues on how to proceed. Everything looked equally messy and terrible; he really didn't want to try touching anything else. He needed backup.

"Yeah, well I did." The old troll carried on, like a deflating hot air balloon letting out a monotonous drone of complaints, interrupted with noises of regret. It was starting to grate on Equius just slightly. "And seems you ain't got a motherfuckin fraction of the pure natural skill that motherfucker had, the innate ability, the motherfuckin penchant for keeping shit clean and tidy-"

"I'm not trying to have his skill." Equius cut in, feeling more than slightly on edge with this lunatic rambling on and on about how much better his ancestor had been than him. Many trolls had similar horns, this troll seemed fixated on the fact that he was the descendant of whoever the ship's last assistance troll had been. But that was impossible. "I'm trying to get my job done."

The troll snapped up, sitting upright again, scowling to him and tipping his head slightly. That had caught his attention, and not in any sort of good way. The snarl that rippled in his throat should have caught Equius standing again, should have shoved him into submission, but something about the whole situation, the constant referrals to someone he was meant to be trying to be, the comments about him not being nearly good enough, something was getting him on edge.

"I don't know why you think I'm this troll's descendant. Heck, maybe I was the product of a bucket you filled with him, but that doesn't mean I have to strive to be like him in every way. I've gone through the training for this. I know how to handle dirty sheets and filthy Highbloods, so if you could just... Let me get on with it, then that would be exceptional."

"You've overstepped your motherfuckin lines, Zahhak." He snarled, and rather than a rush of fear the noise sent a thrill straight through Equius, right from his auriculars, down his spine, straight to his...

Oh dear.

"I'm not here to INHERIT whatever void he left in your quadrants!" He stepped closer to the bigger troll, jabbing a finger down at the floor. "I will not be heir to whatever problems he left you with. I am NOTHING TO DO with him!"

"You got everything to do with him..."

"You're an INFURIATING mess of a troll!" Equius snapped back, throwing an arm out to the room. "Who can't clean up after himself. And expects others to fall to his whim around him, moulding themselves about his issues, well that's not what trolls are for. The trolls on this ship have a PURPOSE. And I'm sure that the commander won't take kindly to you delaying the work schedule of the only cleaner working on the entire ship!"

There was a satisfaction in slamming that motherfucker down that ran deeper than the usual thrill of 'I'm right you're wrong'. He could stand there, doing some weapons-grade looking down his nose at people, and he even crossed his arms over his chest. Wow, he was doing an exceptional job at this. Now he could clean up the room, the troll would be sent to get abluted, and the world would be returned to rights.

'Kurloz' laughed.

It started off as a little wheezy snicker when Equius finished his rant, eyebrows raised in smackdown disbelief and escalated until he was laughing hard enough that his yellowed back teeth could be seen as he clutched his belly and howled with laughter.

"Oh... Oh, motherfucker, that's too rich... Seriously, motherfuckin slay me, shit ain't NEVER gonna get any better than that..." He wiped at his eyes, gasping for breath and looking straight over at Equius. "Motherfucker... If Ampora had thought to tell me a joke of that strain I would have kept him livin for a LONG motherfuckin time comin..."

That didn't rest easy with Equius. Not only did he not like being laughed at in any occasion, but more so he didn't like the fact that something felt badly wrong. Ampora? Well, of course there was his 'acquaintance' Eridan, but the only other one he knew of was the ancestor, the Ampora senior he had always imagined to look like a taller and more muscular version of Eridan with a squarer jaw, that he'd only heard about through the neighbour Vriska who always wanted people to appreciate when she'd done something particularly clever, and as such he got told almost everything she ever figured out. She told him so that she could tell her rival Eridan that she'd told someone else. And everything got very complicated when Eridan came to Equius insisting he told him what she'd told him but not before he told him what she said she'd told him.

It had never been a healthy rivalry.

How had he died again? Some particularly humiliating thing. A death befitting a seadweller, one who had opposed the law dweller rule. He'd died like he'd lived, according to Vriska. And that either meant 'as a joke' or 'as a disappointment with far too much build up and confidence in his own abilities'. Either way worked.

He had been killed by The Grand Highblood.

"You..." Equius almost choked on the word, every muscle tensing, stepping back, looking over the troll who sat splayed out in the bloody chair, cradling the skull of his previous slave in one huge filthy hand. Oh mercy. He'd just... This was the den of The Highblood, the master of the purple caste, the most powerful landwelling troll to exist in this era.

And he hated him.

With a slow shuddering breath, Equius straightened up a little further and looked about the room. "You live in squalor."

Kurloz snorted, shrugging. "Yeah well, about that. The motherfucker who used to help me out with that shit kinda baled on this whole plane of existence." He curled a lip in a smirk, rubbing a thumb over the eye socket of the skull. Dragging his thumb over the teeth. Caressing the bumps in his horns.

"I heard about you when I lived back on Alternia; all these incredible things about how you were the most powerful troll alive and anyone in their right pan capacity would be honoured to live to serve you, to grovel at your feet and obey your every whim. You were painted as some... Some genius tyrannical ruler, who governed settlements with a stroke of his hand, the unquestionable, the eternal..."

The Grand Highblood looked very pleased with himself at the news, smirking and setting the troll head aside.

"Yeah, well, a motherfucker gotta work hard to have his reputation-"

"You're by far the grandest lie I've ever set eyes on."

The reaction was immediate. Kurloz's eyes flicked up, head snapping to stare at Equius, lips already curled back in a snarl, and this was the wet dream of so many trolls of his caste, so many would have every free will removed from them to live a second of this, to even see him breathing before them. But it was all wrong. He wasn't wise, he wasn't twisted and merciless and exciting, he was just spoilt.

"You are OVERSTEPPING your motherfuckin BOUNDS." He snarled again, and Equius found himself ripping off a snarl right back.

"You're despicable. You've been a lie, all this time you've been nothing but a sham, any troll could take your place, anyone could make a mess and demand it be cleaned up, you're NOTHING."

He moved like a troll half his size with agility grown into every sinew of his muscles, ancient beyond meaning and with every year giving him time to grow into an expert in existing, so when he grabbed for Equius' arm and yanked him off his feet there was no resisting.

Equius yelled out when he was overbalanced, collapsing onto the stinking material that coated his thighs, sticky with blood and discharge, and his snarl could be felt reverberating through the breath caught in his air sacks, he was so near and powerful and the hand on his arm felt like he could be snapped accidentally, like he could be careless and shred him to pieces.

"Go ahead." Equius spat out, turning with hair streaked across his face, expression twisted up with rage. "Tear me apart. It won't give you your last puppet back. I bet he was thankful to be gone, where you couldn't drag him down any further-"

The slap that came down on his thighs came out of nowhere; a yelp shocked out of him at the stinging it left racing to his pan, the fact he had made him flinch, the fact that those disgusting gnarled bloody hands had touched him, even through his uniform.

"You need to learn how to speak to your motherfuckin superiors..." He hissed, hand still lingering on his thighs, squeezing hard enough Equius could feel the threat of claws even through the armour he wore.

"I do not, I don't owe you anything..." He hissed, trying to twist until a hand heavy as the religious tomes came down hard on his shoulders, crushing him against The Highblood's thighs as the hand came back down again, sending white hot signals through his nerves straight to his bulge, which had come unsheathed some time back.

"You owe me respect from BLOOD ALONE, wriggler, and that ain't all... You need to learn your motherfucking PLACE..."

Again, and this time he drew his hand away after the sting raced from Equius' thighs up his spine, electric. He hooked a thumb into the belt of the tunic and yanked it down, exposing his skin to the hot humid air of the room, the bloody filthy dust that kicked up when he moved in his chair, and Equius would have fought against it (would have lashed and screamed, really he would, he would have put up such a fight, he was certain) if only he hadn't been Ben rover the lap of his... Superior. The most powerful troll in existence, bar one. And of course, getting him all bruisy would not do. It would be... Impolite.

"Are you ready. To motherfucking behave?" He ground out, leaning over Equius until his hair could be felt brushing against the skin of his thighs and Equius almost gagged, struggling and trying to pull against the only hands he'd ever felt strong enough to hold him down.

God he loved it.

"Why don't you try me and find out?" He hissed, squirming to try and bare his teeth up at The Highblood, thighs rubbing together with a new slickness, warm and eager between his legs though his bulge was pinned to The Highblood's thigh.

"Because, motherfucker, I want to hear you sing."

The hand came down again, sharp and unmerciful against already raw skin, and that strike brought Equius' eyes to the brink of watering. So much hate, hate for the disgusting troll, rage at their situation, rage at himself for building this up to be the ultimate unattainable fantasy.

Even under hands stronger than his own, it took Equius 20 lashes to relent. The noise he made to call for respite was more of a desperate sobbed moan than anything close to coherent, but how could he be expected to ever make sense when there was so much raging up inside his head, and against his sheath, and every emotion known to trollkind was pulsing through his nook.

"Fuckin knew it. Knew you'd give in. You're nothing; less than nothing, you're motherfucking forgettable." He hissed, fingers pressing firm into the meat of his thigh, where welts were already starting to form. They were going to get infected, he just knew it, they'd been inflicted by filthy hands. He wouldn't be able to sit down for an age, and Kurloz would see, he'd know that it had been his doing.

"You won't forget me." Equius hissed back, voice watery but firm, sure, certain that he could make it true. There was a snort from Kurloz, and a big sticky disgusting hand landed on Equius' side. He was shoved to the floor, grunting as he turned to look up at the Highblood who was looking over the yellowed skull at his hand. Equius was starting to think the flesh had probably been cleaned off it by his own tongue, savouring the last taste of gore he'd get from... Whatever quadrant his ancestor had occupied for that beast.

"What makes you so motherfuckin certain of that, huh?" He asked, eyes only flickering to graze Equius for a moment before going back to rolling the skull in the palm of his hand.

"Because you've been hiding out here..." Equius spat back, collecting himself up and stumbling slightly as he moved to his feet. "For /weeks/. Been cowering in your own filth to keep away from me. You couldn't forget me if you got a psion to run 30,000 volts through your thick skull-"

He was cut off when The Highblood launched at him, a roar of rage tearing from his throat, claws glinting with their sharpness in the low light as they swung for him. Equius never flinched, teeth bared right back at the ancient knot of fury and power, though he hissed when the filthy claws sank into the meat of his arms. He turned his head up, ready to bare his teeth in a full-fledged assault on the others face, but before he could move to lunge for him there was a mouth pressed against his own and a hand crushing to his back, pressing him against the others front.

The kiss was a snarl of teeth and tongues, and there was cool blood dripping from between their lips as disgusting wet sounds of mouths clashing together and shifting came accompanying the constant undertone of a growl. Pure hatred reverberated between them, palpable as a shock launcher, the most pitch and pure black, hands finding places to grab and draw blood, fingers pinching hard on the soft undersides of arms (or soft in comparison, it was hell trying to find a soft inch on the old troll, he was wrought of steel cables and thick hide) to draw the most meagre noises of frustration from him whilst his hands had Equius gasping and squirming and it was all so /unfair/.

The back of his legs collided with the platform and he was tipped over before he knew what was happening, the world in a spin of stink and stickiness, with bloody covers pressed against the back of his thighs.

"Is this how you treated him?" Equius spat back. "No wonder he didn't fight harder for life, you're pathetic, I lived in awe of the power of highbloods and /this/ is your reality-"

A hand crushed against his back and spun him over, the other palm crushing against the back of his head and smearing his face into the covers. A gasp of disgust was met with a snarl ripped straight from the cavern of The Highblood's chest, warning, deep and absolutely certain in its power. Didn't stop Equius from trying to turn his head, although his efforts were useless, the hand ground his face down into the mattress, smearing the dried blood in crusty flakes all over his face.

"By the Messiahs, do you ever shut the fuck up?" He muttered, and Equius was about to protest when he was cut off with a hiss of pain, pressure obvious against the backs of his thighs again.

"Wonder how you'd sound if I filled up that noise-hole." The Highblood hissed, pressing against the back of his thigh again, and it became obvious that it was a thickly clothed crotch. The cool wetness of it seeped through the seams in the leather, and the pain came in waves whenever he pressed his hips forwards to grind against him, rutting like an animal.

"I'd bite." Equius hissed back, bristling, trying to get his arms out to his sides, pan a mess of smells and sensations and pure pitchest /hate/, mind washed over with it like tar as he pushed his hips back into the grinds and a grunt of desperation shoved itself out of his throat, almost immediately echoed back by The Highblood when both his hands went to Equius' hips, pushing himself forwards against the lowerblood warmth seeping from his nook, begging to be filled, desperate for it.

"You're a fuckin' liar." He grunted to him, leaning over as he gave a particularly purposeful grind, leaving Equius gasping and - he'd never admit it - shivering from the sensation. "You'd be gagging for it. You'd be begging before it even smeared your motherfuckin' lips, you'd choke it down eager and make a motherfuckin' mess, be drooling all everywhere, that's what you'd be. Like the gutterblooded whore you truly motherfucking are..." He hissed to his ear, leant over him, the foul close musk pressing in around Equius so all he could breathe was his scent and all he could see was hair and blood of The Highblood's making. He got a hand out from under him, pushed against the platform hard and up against the others chest, bucking back into the grind and snarling, hard, feeling the hidden muscle of the others form all about him, the power that shuddered about him.

He was shoved back with too little effort, almost like it was nothing, like he was something disposable and easily resistible.

There was a grunt of effort behind him, and a bulge pressed against his ass.

His eyes went wide and he surged back against it, grabbing a handful of covers and gritting his teeth as he shuddered, legs spreading a little to try and incorporate its girth, a moan shuddering past his lips.

The sickening snicker made him almost regret it. Almost. The thrill he got shuddering right down to his bulge made him not quite reach the edge of regret, though he teetered on it.

"Am I your first time, sweet?" The Highblood crooned, squeezing Equius' hip and shoving forwards, curve of his bulge pressing against Equius' nook and dragging another gasp from him, spine curving deliciously under the clinging mesh of his tunic. "Oh don't worry... It's just doing what's most natural," His mouth was hot and close to Equius' ear, breath felt like it was clinging to everything it touched. The pads of his fingers skimmed the opening of his nook and Equius cried out, hot thin lines sending shudders right through him where his nails raked over far thinner flesh.

"Most motherfucking natural of all... Trolls been fucking since the conception of time itself, and they gonna be fucking until motherfuckers come up with a less messy way of going about shit." He hissed, angler-fish teeth dangerously close to a soft ear shell.

"Then shut up and get on with it." Equius ground out, teeth clenched together hard enough he was worried one was going to crack. He couldn't give him the satisfaction. Not ever. He wouldn't hurt himself over the others infuriating ways, it would be easy if he would just /get inside him already/...

A hand snaked itself firmly between his thighs and shoved them further apart, and Equius almost lost his balance until he felt a firm hand on his hips pulling him back to stability, just as a bulge thicker than Equius' motherfucking arm shunted it's way between his legs.

It tangled with his own, which made an admirable effort to wrap around it and squeeze, but the monster had bypassed his nook all together and gone for fucking the gap between his thighs, up where his own bulge could get in on things. He couldn't say he was entirely disappointed, what with how the tip of his bulge reached up to his pectorals.

That would have split him in two.

"Thighs together, gutterblood." He grunted, pushing as he rolled his hips forward, still crouched over him with a hand planted by Equius' head. It was a struggle, to even try to pull his legs together with such an intrusion forcing them apart, but well worth it when straightened legs caused his ass to shove back up against The Highblood's pelvis, and he could feel the ridge that topped his bulge brushing against his nook lips with every thrust, ohh glory, that felt divine...

"Motherfucker better be grateful I'm all mad considerate..." The Highblood hissed, snapping his hips forwards and slapping his thighs of the blue grazes that Equius had on the back of his legs, causing him to cry out with a shiver. He didn't /feel/ mad considerate. "Not fucking you wide open, breaking you clean in two, had motherfuckers crack open around me, bleed out while I fuck them through it..."

"So I'm - haaahhh - I'm special?" He said, grinding up along The Highblood's length as his bulge gave a particularly delicious twist, wrapping up around Equius' own and rubbing their slicked-up inner edges together, fully unsheathed and wet beyond any reason.

"Don't motherfucking flatter yourself." The Highblood said, the sneer audible in his voice and the way his hips ground up extra fine against Equius like he had a point to prove. "I happen to like motherfuckers that run on the warm side of the spectrum, an you're the only motherfucker on this ship that fits those specifications. So I'm gonna keep you around. Make good motherfucking use of you." Good use indeed, by the way his hips were making Equius drip and shiver, letting out noises of the most unmistakeable unbridled want that had ever spilled from his lips, even when he'd been wrapped up in the heat of the moment with a hand curled around his own bulge, it had never felt this good, he'd never felt the cool of someone else's skin against his own.

"You're only here 'cause you remind me of him." The Highblood spat out, fist tightening in Equius' hair, yanking on it and drawing out another cry of pain. The pace was fierce, rocking the platform and the smaller troll with the snaps of the larger troll's hips, making it tap rhythmically against the wall. Someone would definitely hear that. Neither of them much cared.

Something else was burning itself into Equius' head. Not the same hot black hate as before, but intense caustic irritation. How many times did he need to be reminded he was just a replacement? How much did The Highblood want to shove him down into irrelevance?

No more.

He twisted with a grunt of effort, The Highblood yelping when his bulge was kept trapped between the firm STRONG grip of Equius' thighs. Equius snarled, no restraint, lip wrinkling back from his teeth as one hand went to The Highblood's bulge and /squeezed/, drawing another yelp out of him.

"I'm nobody's replacement." He hissed, eyes full of fury as he dragged his palm over the surface of the bulge, sinking his fingers into it as the troll over him gasped, too caught off his guard to do anything in the way of striking him or getting his dick back. "I'm /Equius Zahhak/ and that is /enough/."

His hand moved over the bulge, stroking fast, wanting to see The Great And Almighty Highblood come at his hand, the hand of a barely-ascended trashblood. And by the look of his expression he was nearly there, wrapped up in so much hate and thick lust, hips working against Equius' thighs again to thrust into the strokes. The final straw was when Equius clenched his thighs and shoved himself up to meet The Highblood's lips, biting down with a snarl and kissing him with all the fury he'd never had a sufficient vent for. All the rage and frustration and pure /hate/ poured into his mouth, and soon it was pouring out of his bulge too.

Metaphorically speaking of course. Ugh.

The Highblood shuddered over him, groaning out, muscles tensing and claws ripping into the sheets about them, genetic material spilling over Equius' stomach and the tip of the thrashing bulge flinging it all the way up to his neck and face. The bulge coiled, squeezing rhythmically around Equius', stringy with lubricant until it finally managed to tip him over the edge, pulling an orgasm out of him which had him throwing his head back and reaching up to cling to The Highblood's shoulder as he squeezed his thighs tighter around the bulge, his own releasing a long flow of genetic material over himself, mingling and marbling with the flood of purple in the low light.

It took a moment of rancid heavy breathing, shoulders heaving and pulling old muscles to use, exerted and burning with effort, until a hand lifted to shove long hair back out of his face and behind his ears, already starting to crust up as the material clinging to them dried.

Equius was spent. His limbs fell away, landing him sprawled back on the filthy platform, covered in more genetic material than he'd ever had any desire to see. Ever.

"Well, brother..." The Highblood heaved a sigh, pulling back as his bulge detangled itself from the mess with Equius', starting to retract. His eyes flicked over the mess on the blueblood's stomach, and he ran his tongue over his lips before giving a breathy sigh.

"I been missing that colour something righteous."


	2. prequel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I spent 90% of the challenge time writing this. Then figured it wasn't going to work. There's no porn in this chapter whatsoever, it's just the backstory of how Equius got to the ZILLYWHY (all of which takes place before chapter 1) and I thought some people might be interested! Highly unedited, mostly nonsensical, I abandoned it in favour of just jumping straight into the porn chapter which worked out alright in the end!
> 
> You also get to meet the infamous Commander Teflan, whose fault it is that Equius got into that whole sorry situation in the first place
> 
> Please enjoy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw no porn

The imperial shuttle slammed straight into the waiting net. 

It had looked for a second like it was going to slow before roaring its engines to higher thrust and tearing along, dragging the drone-flown anchor capsules along with it as the net streamlined around it, wires pulled taut over the hull. The psion that was monitoring the traps spread out along known routes had activated it a little too early, and started hissing and spitting with rage in their far off control pod that the trap was WASTED; a ship with those engines could stop in time and fly the fuck around it, stupid, STUPID!

So imagine her surprise when the shuttle barrelled right into it, dragging the drones along with it like it had never seen them. The engines screamed, flaps flaring wider to accommodate for the straining thrust as they pushed forwards against the drones trying to pull them back, wires near to snapping as they closed around the ship, the monitoring psion watching with a slack jaw as they punched in the command to seal the net and shock the engines with a pulse to break them and shock anyone inside into unconsciousness. Probably killing the lowerbloods that the Subjugglators kept as black-thumb fodder to keep their machines running, but they didn't matter, they were after the big beasts, the commanders who knew where shit was kept, who knew where they were targeting with their next attacks, who could have all their information tortured out of them to fuel a more righteous cause.

Another drone swooped in to in front of the shuttle, which was still straining forwards against the net, the whine of their engines growing higher, and the camera on the drone popped its cap to swivel the lenses into focus on the front window, see who they'd bagged. There were three faces, one wrought up with concentration and two wrought up with grins. There was no way for the drone to hear what the commander said, but their lips could be seen to curl back in barking command.

Right before the fire plumed over the hull, fuel sprayed over the wires with flames surging after it. The psion watching screamed, energy crackling throughout the command pod, fist slamming down on the ==> EXECUTE button just a second too late. The wires sprung loose, flailing away from the shuttle, cracked in a clean line along where the holy fire had burnt righteous fury along their constraints. The shuttle was gone in seconds, all the energy built up in the engines loosed as soon as the wires snapped free, and it shot away in a blaze of true fury.

"BOMB THE FUCKERS!" Commander Teflan screeched, neck snapping back to see the last glimpse of anti-imperial surveillance drones before the driver took a sharp left and flung around the contents of the shuttle like a wiggler rattling around a teething ring. "FUCKING SUUUUUCK IT, YOU ROWDY BASTARDS!" She screamed, grin warping open her face as her heavy hand landed on her crotch and tugged at the leather in the general direction of the fiery mess they'd left behind. "GET A MOUTH FULL OF THESE GLOBES AN GET A SMEARY TASTE OF GLORY, YOU HOPPED UP OVER-GROWN SHIT SACKS! YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE US?" She stormed towards the back of the ship, feet sure even as the shuttle was thrown around when the pilot banked furiously to avoid a second lot of net spreaders who had been set up along their diversion. 

"THINK YOU CAN INTERRUPT OUR RIGHTEOUS JOURNEY, THINK YOU CAN MOTHERFUCKING DIVERGE THE PATH MINSTRELS PLANNED OUT FOR US? YOU CAN SUCKLE DOWN MY MOTHERFUCKING BULGE, AN I'LL FUCK THE HOLE IN YOUR HEAD WHAT CAUSED ALL SENSE TO LEAK OUT ALL OVER THE MOTHERFUCKING GROUND-" She stumbled and turned when she reached as far back as she could go without thrashing her way into the cargo hold, sprinting back up the length of the shuttle and leaning over the pilot's seat, grabbing a handful of wiry olive-blooded hair and tugging the head down towards her crotch.

"HOWS ABOUT IT, POPPET?"

"Fuck off, Teflan." The driver grunted, elbowing her commander in the nads region and straightening back up in time to shove the controls down and dive under some shrapnel the latest set of anarchist drones had flung out in a last desperate measure. "We got a fucking job and a fucking deadline, and I'm pushing it here. Go check on the cargo."

"The cargo's a sturdy motherfucker, all wrapped up in prestige and promise, he can take a rolling..." She churred near the pilot's ear, but pulled away all the same, snickering to herself as she smacked the pilot's chair and sent it swirling, so she had to grapple with the wheel and the whole shuttle took a shunt at the wrench on the controls.

Their 'cargo' slammed into the side wall of the containment block, shoulder thrown against scrappy padding which had been more than half torn away, along with most of the wall under it in parts, peeled back like it had been set on by a hefty hornbeast wanting to open up a can of saltfish. The insulation was visible, and even that was clawed up and bloody from where a scrub over couldn't reach all the haem that had soaked into it. He pulled himself to his feet again, looking back out the little window covered up with cluckbeast wire to keep fingers off it, and he could see very little other than a bluesy-black darkness speckled with all kinds of planets and star systems and smatterings of brightness where dust collected together. It was the sky, space, uninterrupted by a marbled atmosphere, like it should look at night without the glare of six moons messing it up. Pure space. Void.

Equius had been plucked from the clutch of bluebloods as soon as he'd reached the processing station. It had been a long journey and although they were all doing a good job of keeping their expressions in check it was obvious they were thirsting to get to somewhere they could stretch their legs without being under the watchful eye of the supervision drones that had been keeping an eye on them from the offset, right from them the hulking black machines that had plucked them off the planet had broke orbit. 

-=-=-

They'd stayed in close quarters after ascending from Alternia on their combined wriggling day, all kept on the same ship in a tiny amount of blocks, shoulder to shoulder without seats to sit in. They had handles dangling from the ceiling of the ship, the ship with score marks along its walls from years of horns scraping past it, the ship where the only colour on the floor was indigo, rusted like an old tanker left for scrap on a beach someplace far off left cold and twisted from some forgotten battle.

The doors had opened, they'd moved out, moved between figures with clipboards and concentration wrought across their faces, scribbling down rough sketches of sigils and horn shapes and other defining features of noteworthy trolls. He only made it past the first two adults before a hand clamped around his shoulder and he was heaved from the crowd with a squawk of surprise, and nobody even stopped to wonder where he'd disappeared to. The gap he left was quick to be filled up with people eager for more room to walk in. He was forgotten. None of these trolls had ever even known he'd existed.

He touched his shoulder where the huge hand had grabbed him, so sure in its power that it didn't bother with a net or a noose or any kind of bag to carry him in. It had just yanked him from the pack, holding him tight, and carried him the fuck off. He remembered their voices, clear and rough as stone underfoot.

"Motherfucker, you seein what I'm seein?" A voice had rumbled as he was turned away from the crowd to face a bare wall, not knowing whether to wriggle like a scruffed purrbeast or reach straight up and break the fingers of whoever was holding him by his collar and hair tight enough to be nearly inescapable. There were fingers curled into his mane, nails digging into his skin that felt chewed short, foul breath on his ear, and he had to reach up and clamp hands around the wrist above him, because the tension was tight on his hair and he felt like it was going to tear off if he dangled any longer, scalping him.

"Serendipity."

"Damn straight."

He'd listened to the growling voices, the shudder of the metal underneath them, stretched to try and reach the floor.

"Obedient motherfucker."

"Plenty so. You reckon we should go pick up an insurance? In case this one ain't meant to work out?"

There was a noise of consideration, and he was lifted higher from the ground, turned to face the troll that had lifted him up. There was a painted face, missing teeth, one eye scarred over with dense ropey tissue, and horns that twisted around in front of their face capped with sharpened gold lids.

A moment of consideration, looking him over with a grimace, and they let out a rumbling laugh that sounded like it bordered on a cough. "Nah. This motherfucker'll do just fine..." They smirked, looking over to their companion who popped up over their shoulder to check him out in turn. Just as old and ugly. Just as much facepaint smeared on, and just as much scarring although this one looked like they'd been gnarled back together with industrial staples. The metal struts were still just visible under bulky regrown muscle.

Highbloods, the pair of them. Good Highbloods. Proper ones. Not like the flimsy excuse for a Highblood he'd had to endure back home, one that was all smiles and ridiculous quirks and forgiveness.

"Be joyous, motherfucker, you're gonna get to visit a place most motherfuckers can only visit in wet dreams an' fever screams." The other one cackled, and his handler joined the snickery chorus. Equius said nothing. He knew better than to question them, knew what a true Highblood would do to him if he questioned them, and it would be far more than Gamzee had ever garbled out when he'd pushed him to punish him. It would be things he could barely comprehend. Wreaking down justice and not caring if bones and sinew snapped under its impact.

-=-=-

Footsteps thumped from far off, dragging him out of recollection, and he spun around to the only door to the room. Who was coming to him? They were still moving, there was no way they'd let him out at this height. He'd heard that trolls exploded when they were let out in space. Their eyes popped out and their food sacs expanded inside them, their lungs too, bursting outwards and splitting open the flesh between their thoracic struts.

The shutter to the door slid back sharply and showed the same dark face that had plucked him out of the crowd, scanning over him wordlessly and sneering slightly before it snapped shut again, and bars were worked on the other side. The door ground open, and she leaned into the room, horns angled carefully.

"Boring motherfucker, ain't you?" She muttered, looking a little disgusted. He stared back, wondering how he was possibly meant to respond to that. She was a Highblood, and an old one at that. He was a barely-ascended blue, fresh off the metaphorical root vegetable cart, taken from the chambers of the ascension theatre with no explanation for what was happening or where he was going, other than some weirdly sexual metaphor about wet dreams. How was he meant to feel about that?

"Touching down inside fifteen time wraps." She muttered, and was out of the block again with the door slamming shut before the last word was even fully out of her mouth. The clang reverberated inside the metal-lined block hard enough to send pangs down his remaining horn, and his ears folded in a little when he gave a slight grimace at the sensation. So much metal, everywhere. Nothing organic in sight apart from trolls.

He padded towards the door, hesitating a second before pressing an ear to it and holding his breath as he listened intently. There was music. It sounded tinny, like it was being cranked out of a stereo not meant to handle that calibre of tunes. Loud voices, cackles, a falsetto followed by a roar of laughter. Thumping. He frowned, shifting slightly and trying to pick out actual lines of conversation.

"An he was all 'I ain't feelin like interpretin merciful today, Besteb, so you gonna wanna-' "

"Fuck him, sister, fuck him, in Empress' name I ain't never seen-"

Gossip? About, what, quadrant mates? Seemed so. Seemed unbefitting of them, though, he would have thought they'd be going over battle plans or talking in prayers or have deeper, growling voices. The ones he'd seen so far were plenty tall, and had to duck through doorways in the specially designed and streamlined ship, but they didn't seem to act any older than 20 sweeps. Maybe Highbloods stopped ageing mentally once they passed their first pupation. That would explain a whole lot of Trollian history books he had previously been confused by.

"You think so? I mean, motherfuck, the boy's a trial but I ain't one to cut ties so motherfuckin soon."

"Sister, you gonna listen at me or not? If he ain't gonna get the engraving himself then you sure as fuck ain't gonna get it for him. It ain't gonna convince him of shit, they're all the fuckin same, once they get a couple notches in their horns they think they're the fuckin bulgemaster extraordinaire." It sounded like all they needed were a couple of bottles of claw polish and a copy of Teen Troll weekly and they'd be having a sleepover fit for a couple of teens. Were these the people running the top of the game?

"WOOOOO STICKY MINE!"

The ship swerved, and Equius was thrown across the room to an unpadded gouge in the wall, sinking his hands into the padding to try and anchor himself as it swerved again to right itself and the engines kicked their whining up a gear. He could feel inertia hit him in the gut, as they shot forwards and the window was filled with a plume of orange flame. The only sound from it was the pattering of debris dusting the wall, and they soon rocketed past the explosion and left the tattered hulk it had left behind in their dust.

"AHAAA SORRY BROTHER! MESSIAHS GUIDE YOU FROM YOUR PIT OF-" Words trailed off to noises as they thumped through the ship to a different room, hollering and clapping palms off the windows. They were hooting, and the ship swerved again, dipping and dancing around 'sticky mines', and Equius was left trying to haul himself to his feet, or shove himself back into a corner where he wouldn't get painted deep blue with bruises. They were under attack; he'd been flung around like a rag toy thrown to a feral wriggler and a troll made of weaker stuff might have been left snapped and useless. But he was left blooming blueness on every limb, shoulders aching from trying to brace himself against walls. Their station couldn't come soon enough.

The rumbling and swerving ended like a storm passing; all at once silence fell over them and the ship evened out. He didn't let go of the wall for a long while, until he started to see the light coming in through the high window start to change hue. The sky paled, going from a deep blue black to a yellow as lights from inside the ship spilled out and bleached it. It went from yellow to orange. Orange to red. And soon the cusp of a hangar broke up the sky, blocking out the last of the stars when the blast doors lowered, slowly, slow as something ancient and organic, closing them in. The doors were peeling and patched, scraps of metal bolted over the tears, some of which looked older than named star systems.

The shuttle landed with a thunk.

A series of smaller thunks followed it up, footfalls, and a heavy body shoved its way through the door to the containment block. The Highblood from before, her, the one who'd already come and checked on him.

"Well come the fuck on, then, shift it motherfucker, this ain't a death march." She barked, turning around and ducking out the door, and Equius had to scramble to keep up. The corridors of the shuttle were tattered, like they'd had thousands of horns scraped along them in their time, and at one point the ceiling might have been cloth-lined. That had been lost to horns and hair a long while back, and the whole metal lining of the place shuddered under his feet as the highbloods moved around with the mass of several tree trunks, one leaning over to the hatch right at the very front and slamming on it with a gnarled fist that made the metal look like a soggy nutrition sack.

A hatch opened and a stocky oliveblood turned on the swivel seat it sat on, small even compared to Equius but wrapped in gristle from years of being shoved around by big careless trolls with wrecking balls for hands. It extended a gnarled middle finger from a paw with bandages tight around its hands, shaking them off and patting the direction plate until it shut down and lights started flickering off.

Equius had never seen a grown oliveblood before. He'd seen an artist's depiction of The Signless' companion, seen her all pious and wrapped in his cloak, lithe and dependant and bendable. This made a lot more sense. Was this what Nepeta was going to grow into? Oh, Nepeta, how he wanted to talk to her about this and ask what she knew about her bloodline and their heritage and-

It unstraddled the pilot's seat, shoving past the highblood who smacked it on the ass as it passed, getting a faceful of spit from a wide-mouthed hiss in retaliation as the pilot shunted their way out of the shuttle ahead of the pack of purples shoving up behind it. Seemed everyone wanted to be out in time for endmeal, and they weren't going to wait for Equius to get out of the way to get to it.

He was near enough the first troll to step out of a ship into true adulthood out of this clutch, thanks to the Highbloods 'efficiency'. Truth was that they didn't want to linger too much around the shittier castes when they'd been at the sorting station, and the drivers knew better than to take a scenic route when there was brawnbeast getting put on the table. 

They moved into the conjugation tunnel between the smallish cruiser that had carried them and the station, and if he craned his neck Equius could get a glance at the ship they'd arrived in. It was something that might have at one point been sleek but seemed to have dropped off into the realms of disrepair from careless handling and no sort of regular upkeep, and he wondered with a pang of surprise if that was how they treated all their machinery. Weren't there any lesser castes about to provide maintenance?

A hand landed on the back of his head, and he had to look where he was going again.

"Don't make me fuckin carry you, whelp." One of them hissed, and his shoulders stiffened as he continued to march as briskly as he could manage. It was a job to keep up with Highbloods who were cutting a brisk pace to make it to a meal hall, and as the walls of the tunnel became sparsely decorated with tapestries and the floors thickly lined with rugs he couldn't spare a glance long enough to make out any details. The murals remained blurs of earthy colour, and the tapestries were a finely-stitched mystery.

The whole place stank. It was sweet and metallic, with a painty undertone. It was the kind of smell that made you feel sticky. Everything was huge, four times any size that had ever been necessary back on Alternia, but evidently not big enough because every door frame was scored with marks all the way around, grooves filled with rust and scum and... Purple. Miscellaneous purple.

There was another hand on his shoulder, and again he was lifted. Was this some sort of trend in these parts? Peasant-lifting? The highbloods around him kept on moving, leaving him behind and filling up the tiny void of space he'd left between them, as he was swept away by another new firm hand, when the doors they'd wandered through slammed shut after them.

"Fucking new property has to go through inbound, I really don't know why I bother sometimes, peasant, I really fuckin don't..." They muttered, chuntering away to themselves as he twisted to get an eyeful of them and wondered why he even bothered. Highbloods were starting to filter in and out of his life like clouds in a hurricane. They kept popping out of nowhere. More were coming down the hall in the direction he was being carried, completely ignoring the dangling blueblood, some chattering amongst themselves, some bickering sourly, most intent on getting to the food hall as a matter of motherfucking urgency.

But it was all gone when he entered 'inbound'. The tapestries, the silks billowing from the ceilings, the thick carpet underfoot, that was gone. There was bare steel under the feet of the highblood that carried him, and the walls here were far less scratched and scuffed. Flawlessly smooth, in fact. Nothing to grab onto.

"NEW INBOUND, TRESSA!"

"OH FUCKING FINALLY. IS THIS THE REPLACEMENT?"

They talked with the volume up at 11 all the time, and the troll who turned around had what looked like three pairs of glasses stacked over each other.

"I FUCKIN ASSUME SO, YOU KNOW HOW TEFLAN GETS ROUND FOOD. SHE WASN'T SAYING SHIT. ALMOST WALKED HIM STRAIGHT INTO THE FOOD HALL."

"HA. CLASSIC TEFLAN."

"HA YOURSELF, YOU KNOW HOW THEY WOULDA KICKED OFF, UNPROCESSED MOTHERFUCKER STRUTTING AROUND THEIR CHOW."

"YEAH YEAH, YOU WORRY TOO MUCH. PUT 'EM THERE."

Bang bang. Their paw slamming on the table.

BANG. Equius slamming on the table.

Lights swivelled to point at him, and a hand was on his horn, bending his head back, drawing a gasp out of him and tensing up every string of fibre in his neck.

"Still, peasantblood." Grunted the command from the troll handling him, as the other crashed down into a chair and slapped the husktop to life, dull screen light barely visible under the glare of the lights pointed at the inbound property.

"Troll is in good condition, age 9 sweeps, inbound for indefinite service." They started, bending his head back and forth, sticking a gloved finger in his mouth and pulling his lips away from his teeth as they counted out loud, coding in which teeth were missing and which were intact, listing off things they could see about him, how his skin was flawed, what his horn shape was, droning on and on to programme into the machine without any sort of feedback, working on a non stop roll of instructions and qualities to be listed.

He'd almost untensed from the horn grab when there was a jab in his thigh and his foot almost went straight through the plating on the table.

"I said STILL, peasantblood." The growl was snapped out of them like emotion was an unwelcome interruption, and they handed off the needle they'd stabbed him with to their co-worker on the husktop. Prodding the bloody tip into a pustule that started to ooze as soon as it had been punctured, the whole thing made an aggressive churning sound and sputtered before sighing, seeming to sag, and a reel of paper curled out the top of the machine.

"Input successful."

"FUCKING SCORE!" The troll who had been resting by the husktop punched the side of it, then turned to knock heads with their assistant and grunt with victory. Equius pulled back onto the table slightly, drawing in his legs and watching them. Silently.

"Tag is reeeaaady..." The programmer chimed, pulling a firm seed-like growth off the side of a glowing pod, handing it to their assistant who loaded it into a very big-looking needle gun specibus.

"Woah there!" Equius called out, shuffling away faster, lifting an arm as they closed in.

"Oh there there, it's just one little prick." The assistant crooned, tutting and leaning forward. The blueblood went to pull back, trying to jerk out of range, and his pan seized up in protest. In thick purple protest. Protest which had seeped in through his oculars, sizzling off the pan of the assistant, who had no trouble at all sliding the needle up into his thigh and depositing their 'tag' an inch under the skin. Equius found he didn't want to groan. He wanted, most of all, to hold perfectly still. So helpful. He was definitely helpful, he thought. That was what he wanted to be right now. What he wanted more than anything.

As soon as the purple pulled back he creased over, folding double, gasping and pressing a hand hard against his mouth. Holy heck, holy shit, holy shiiii-

"It ain't that bad." The programmer snickered, looking to his coworker with eyes trickling back to their normal purple from the dancing marbelling purple-pink, and sending his oriculars on a rotation at the blueblood's antics. They were always dramatic when they were fresh out of sorting. Equius was still doubled over on the table, clutching his thigh and face, when they started chatting again.

"RIGHT," Oh good the volume was back up. "WHERE'S THE NEXT ONE?"

"ONLY ONE MOTHERFUCKER THIS TIME."

"WHAT? REALLY?"

"OH YEAH. RECKON THEY WERE CONFIDENT."

"CONFIDENT?"

"MM-HMM.

Another round of tsk-ing and disapproving noises. An arm around his waist. He was hauled off the table, carried out of the block, wincing, shuddering, hand sticky with blood dripping out of the wound they'd left behind.

"Marnac? Clothe the motherfucker."

'Marnac' took him. There wasn't much to remember after that


End file.
